The White Mountains of Eredain

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The king had been dead nine days when Halren rode north with his last letter.

Three days before his death, the king wrote the letter himself, resting his hand
between lines, and sealed it with his small ring rather than the seal of the realm.

The name upon it was Edren Valis, in the kingdom beyond Eredain. The king had
spoken of him perhaps a dozen times in thirty years, always as someone needing no
introduction. They had been young together and had not stood in the same room for
forty years.

Halren put the letter in an oiled leather case beneath his coat and crossed the
northern bridge as mourning bells sounded.

For a week he traveled familiar country. At an inn he was served onions baked in
cream and remembered the king pushing away the same dish twenty years before.
His Majesty had maintained that any vegetable requiring cream to make it edible had
already lost its argument, then stolen half of Halren's bread.

Halren ate the onions and wiped the dish clean.

Beyond the northern river, familiar words lengthened at their ends and milestones
named places Halren knew only from maps. At an old bridge, masons fitted fresh
yellow blocks into a rain-dark arch while their children fished below. Fresh chisel
marks showed white against the old stone. That evening Halren rubbed his knees
before the fire as a boy passed carrying two logs. At sixteen, Halren had carried
three.

Eredain appeared next morning, a pale unevenness beyond the northern hills. By
afternoon it had disappeared.

Three days later, a grandmother gave Halren the good blanket for his journey north
while her grandson drew a washed-out bridge and its bypass in flour. Halren
followed his road through white-barked trees and copper leaves. The mountains
vanished in rain; when it cleared, he crossed a wooded ridge and found them
occupying half the north.

He dismounted to tighten the mare's girth. Snow lay deep in the high ravines,
untouched by the autumn thaw below.

Forty years was an enormous span to a man and almost nothing to a mountain.

Halren rode on.

Beyond the last broad river, ochre towers rose from black pine and white cedar. The
road entered their shadow at noon and did not leave it until evening. Pale streams
crossed the road from clefts in the rock.

The white mountains ceased to be a horizon and became the country ahead.
Waterfalls broke into white air before reaching the forest. At night the Moon climbed
behind the peaks, silvering whole faces of stone while valleys remained dark.

A northern family shared supper with him at a roadside house. Their daughter had
learned his language from her grandfather, who had crossed south as a youth and
remembered Halren's capital before its eastern gate was rebuilt. He asked whether a
chestnut seller still kept his stall by the river steps.

Halren remembered the stall. The seller had been dead more than twenty years.

In the morning the family went east and Halren north.

The road steepened; twisted white trees dwindled and disappeared. Some mornings
Halren woke uncertain which way the previous day's road had turned. Inside its
leather case, the letter remained dry.

Near the summit, someone had stacked dry wood beneath a shelter bench. Halren
burned three pieces and left four.

He climbed before sunrise. For hours the road moved between pale walls where
nothing grew, then emerged on a high shelf. Through a break in the peaks, amber
towers had become ochre teeth, forests dark folds, rivers scratches of light. Beyond
sight, bells would be sounding over the city.

The road turned upward again.

The Moon remained after dawn, immense and bone-pale above the pass. Halren
climbed with the mare breathing behind his shoulder, and for a little while the old
road carried them almost beneath the Moon.

Near noon it entered a cleft between two snow-bright walls. The passage narrowed,
bent around the mountain, and opened.

The northern kingdom lay below.

Mountain forests descended for leagues into a broad inhabited country divided by
great rivers. Roads threaded among villages toward distant towns and a white-
roofed city beside a curving river. Beyond it, blue hills receded until the last dissolved
beneath the sky.

Halren stood with one hand on the mare's bridle until she nudged his shoulder.

Then he began down.

The mountains rose behind him for four days, then showed only from high ground.
Beyond the river city he followed an innkeeper's small map east to the village named
on the letter.

Edren Valis lived beyond the last houses in a stone cottage beside a stream, a red-
leafed tree at its gate. The man who opened the door was tall despite his years,
white-haired, one wrist wrapped in cloth.

Halren gave his name and the country from which he had come, then took the
leather case from beneath his coat.

Edren watched him remove the letter. When he saw the small seal pressed into the
wax, his wrapped hand rose.

Halren placed the letter in his hand.